furchte_die_schildkrote

[apiroscsizmak]

I want to receive feedback by: Email, discord PM, and commenting on this post are all fine
scary turtle#6845
supersecretsockman@gmail.com

Here are the works I want feedback on: Anything on my AO3 from the past year except for Absolutely Quackers.

My works' fandoms and content notes are: Mostly TMA. One Les Mis fic. All tagged thoroughly. All explicit, non-con. Some underage and incest.

I have these questions for readers: I am most interested in ways I can make my porn hotter. Possible questions to address that include: What strengths and weaknesses do you find in the writing? Are there parts that drag/feel rushed? Are there parts that feel empty, or like they could use more emotional or physical grounding? I notice that a lot of the fics I find hottest have a strong sense of specificity (to the canon, to the setting, and/or to the characters). Is that something I manage in my own writing? Are there certain places you think could benefit from a stronger sense of specificity? Are there trends you notice in my writing that hinder the overall story, distract you as a reader, or weaken the emotional/physical/sexual intensity of the story?

Don't feel the need to address every question, and if you have other ideas of how to approach the critique, feel free to run with those instead! I just included these in case you want something to springboard off of. The main thrust of what I am looking for more broadly is: What are the general strengths? What could I change/do better/improve on? And how can I maximize hotness?

I would prefer gentle (5) or direct (1) feedback, or something in between: 3-ish (anywhere between 2-4 would be fine)

Comments are unscreened.

Comments

[enisy]

on display in a gilded cage is excellent whumpfic. It's impressive how it's 5K words of pure smut, give or take, and yet it almost never drags its feet, and every humiliation inflicted on Enjolras feels new and significant. I especially loved both of the mirror scenes - Enjolras bearing witness to his degradation in such a direct, well-described manner - and the way you integrated Combeferre and Prouvaire into the story. I initially thought that they'd just be there as bargaining chips, so I was impressed that they were A) aroused by watching Enjolras, which made them more dynamic actors in the story, and B) actively dragged into the whole mess at the end. Damn!

Other favorite bits include:
- a loose, Grecian knot behind his head with delicate ringlets framing his face: such a nice description
- Felix gave a quick, hard pinch to each of Enjolras’ nipples, admiring their rosy color before opening the door to the drawing room: hot
- Shame at the sight of their bruised skin and gaunt frames in comparison to his own pampered, adorned appearance, as he grew acutely aware of Felix’s reluctance to mark him apart from his early beatings those first few weeks: an interesting and fairly original angle for the humiliation trope
- Even as he glared up at the man, Enjolras moved his free hand to his nipples, rubbing small circles around each in turn. He let out short, shallow moans, letting his mouth hum around Guillaume’s cock: Enjolras being forced to pleasure himself is 👌, and I love some of the language in this passage, like "short, shallow moans" and the verb "hum"
- He had heard Felix describe it often enough in painfully loving detail—the man’s cock disappearing inside Enjolras’ mouth, the way Enjolras’ lips wrapped tight around its length, red and glistening and stretched to their limit: oof
- Each man seemed to blend with the next, and all Enjolras was aware of was the endless ache in his jaw, the weight of a cock sliding back and forth inside his mouth, and the intermingling of sharp, splitting pain with a dull, aching soreness deep inside him as his ass was fucked raw: I really love the dreamlike, helpless atmosphere you evoke here

The only event I felt slowed down the story a bit was the blowjob scene involving Guillaume and the other man (although it did have several nice moments, like the one I cited above). There's nothing inherently wrong with it, except it seems a bit generic and perfunctory, like it's only there because it has to be there. So, perhaps it lacks that "canon specificity" that you talked about. I also felt that “What kind of a whore are you?” the man spat at him. The man struck him across the cheek while still holding Enjolras’ head firmly in place was an awkward transition - maybe because "the man" is the subject in both sentences.

Moreover, I had the impression it took too long before the reader found out how long Enjolras had been used sexually, which is an important piece of context. It wasn't clear until Felix's "His mouth was made to be fucked, but it’s taken months of work to hone" that the time span became clear to me. Before that, there were some insinuations (like This was the closest Enjolras had come to feeling like a human being in months), but I thought they might just have been references to his captivity, or the rigors of the revolution. On a similar note, the phrase already, he felt empty and exhausted, and he had only serviced three of the men so far did not have the intended impact for me because I did not know how many men were there. (Apologies if these things were mentioned and I just missed them!)

There were a handful of grammatical errors (and unless his is a uniquely gifted man / With Enjolras head held fast / All you have to do kneel there), but they were minor. What you should pay more attention to is the spelling of the verb breathe, which you often write as breath, and - even more importantly - tense switching. The fic is written in past tense, but at some point you switch to present tense for several paragraphs (starting from Just as Enjolras feels himself approaching climax, Lucien pulls out of his mouth and begins stroking himself), and it happens once more earlier on, too (But regardless of what would become of Enjolras, so long as Felix is dead on the floor by the end of the night, he will have accomplished something).

That being said, I kinda had to go out of my way to look for areas of improvement, because the fanfic is, overall, of very high quality. Great job!

[apiroscsizmak]

Thank you so much for the feedback! I was so excited to see this was one of the fics that got picked; since it was my first try at a gangbang, getting an idea of what worked and what didn't is especially helpful. The points about the Guillaume part feeling perfunctory and the size of the group not being specified were especially helpful, as was the point about it not being clear how Enjolras had been abused for months beforehand. (And thank you for catching the breath/breathe mixup and the tense-shifting--two of my greatest nemeses, always tripping me up!) I also very much appreciated hearing what parts you felt worked best. Thank you again for such useful commentary!

[enisy]

You're very welcome! I'm glad you found it useful. :) I enjoyed reading the story!

through the cracked mirror

[filigranka]

Re: hotness

I’m afraid I might not be the best person to ask about hotness of the porn, actually. What I like in porn, is not sex, but politics, tension and relations, so all the things done by dialogue or inner monologue – and in turn, I often find 100% gen, T-rated pieces hotter than porn of any kind. As long as the villain can talk and talk for hours at poor Bond during a fancy dinner. ;) If you want to make your porn conventionally hotter, then all input I have is very much… theoretical and we all know how far theory lands from practice.

But yes, in theory, specificity, especially in sensual descriptions, should make things hotter. On the other hand, there’s always dreaded “purple prose” territory and I know from personal experience oh-so-well how easy one may land there, if one focus too much of writing descriptions, especially of the original, complicated, very poetic and “oooh, nobody used this simile before” kind. On the third hand – it’s a horror canon, after all! ;) – if what I osmosed about TMA is right, then this is canon where a little cheesy, over the top, mysterious and very unusual – even slightly “wrong”, combining two non-fitting, paradoxical, oxymoronic etc. elements (that classic “sea like wine” – combining two traits which, in theory, belong to different classes of trait might work nicely, too, to denote some other-world-like feeling or some not-quite-human character struggling with using human classifications/emulating human mind. just throwing ideas) descriptions and stylistic devices might work better than in most. I totally get being very restrained in this aspect, I’m got burnt by my own purple prose a lot of times, too, and I admire your restraint in using language – it’s simple, focused on action/movements only – I think you might consider trying to be more courageous in metaphor- similes- etc. usage.

And focus less on descriptions of sensations conveyed by the abstract, undefined words – from the perspective of conveying sensations to a reader, they tend to be pretty empty. Not completely, because of course we get to know that X was pleasant, not painful or vice versa, this count as some bits of information; but ultimately both pain and pleasure are very non-specific, abstract words. Words from the pretty high-level of generalisation; “a plant” is more general than “a flower”, and “a flower” than “a rose”. Of course, this is pretty obvious and just as obvious is, that human feelings are much harder to pinpoint and define than plants’ genus, so we can’t really get rid of abstraction from them so easily. Hence the trap of purple prose. But since you asked, I find– within the theory – it’s actually helpful to think about descriptions of feelings, porn etc. the same way one would think of a description of one of these easy thing, like animals or flowers.

Would we write thing like “X held a plan in her hand”? Usually not, not if one wasn’t aiming for some special effect. One would usually at least add use “a flower, a herb, a tree (because X was a giantess)” – but actually, one would probably use that rose or a poppy, if only to add some specificity to the description – and for the ease of readers’ with visual imagination aka vast majority of them – and I think we may even assume some colour would be given to us as well. Should be. I forget about it all the time in my own writing, but it should be. ;)

So, in this overwrought analogy, “pain” or “pleasure” are rough equivalent of “a plant” (“a sensation” = “an object”, I guess). Once one thinks about it this way, it’s easier to notice where exactly our descriptions of emotions, sensations etc. are sliding into a too-generalised padding and our own stock-phrases.

Granted, porn has its rights and it surely loves all the enormous pains and incredibly planty plants. From, again, theoretical perspective, “enormous”, “incredible” and the like are empty, though, because, by the virtue of being unimaginable, they’re non-descriptive and readers’ minds, have nothing – sensual – to imagine/do with it. It’s not bad in itself, but if there’s too many moments like this, the brain/mind might get bored and inattentive. It’s like trying to cut through the padding – tiring.

But it’s only a theory and I can’t guarantee it’ll help. Personally, I’d not mind getting 10k of tensed, detailed dialogue followed by “and words can’t describe how hot was sex they had after” as porn, I’d probably find it hotter than nominal porn. On the other hand, I find this approach helpful in writing normal descriptions, too. I still forget about them half the times, but it’s a progress! (in my defence, I have no visual imagination, so imagining all the movements… places… is-it-possible-to-turn-one’s-neck-this-way… is above my abilities. Which I add, because perhaps you have the same problem, too – there’s not much descriptions in your fics, in general, just like in mine, no colours, no shapes, no sizes etc. – and then we can at least high-five and commiserate, both).


“You get to see Danny again,” it said, a wistful, teasing tone creeping into its voice.
Tim perked up, in spite of himself.
“A fire eater has his eyes. A clown has his voice. His skin gets passed around for the most part, but Nikola—generous woman that she is—gave me this,” it said, pointing to a patch of skin sewn across its palm. Disgust and rage tore through Tim as he realized its tone was slightly off from the other skin in an achingly familiar way. Tim shouted against the gag, pulling against his binds and thrashing under the creature’s weight, all while it laughed with empty warmth.”

This is a very strong point of this fic! of course, because it’s mostly about relations, tension and psychology, and personal jabs and what interests me if not all these?… It’s a whole little fic withing fic, a horror story within the horror story. First, the hope – the innocuous enough, for a given canon; beginning, typical for horror stories – then, a quick sketch of relations between characters – Danny and Tim – and then the terrible and gruesome reveal at the end. The whole enumeration is written very nicely – poetically – too, and ain’t it really nice/the creepiest that Danny seems to bring up the best of (some sentimentality, attachment, some love) in this caricature of Tim, too? And ha, I got all of this from this one fragment only, despite having no idea what all these characters are, so I think it does really, really good job in establishing the setting and emotions.

I think the general structure/pacing of the thing is good enough, too, it’s very clear – we got to know how Tim got into his current position and how he’s going to escape, and we also get a pretty ominous payment/treat from Elias, which allows us to imagine Tim’s future pretty well. Ah, and while I am at it:
“Of course he had been watched.” – Elias is really a nicely immoral bastard here. :D I wonder if he had been suppressing Tim’s wit before, to ensure he wouldn’t escape without getting indebted (and cutting off the show too early – such a tragedy it’d have been!).

“It pushed its fingers into his mouth—cooler than fingers should be, with the taste and texture of leather gloves.” – this is such a cool piece of description, a really working IMHO. It’s unsettling, it’s scream “WRONG” and it’s very sensual – leather gloves are a common enough object we may assume a lot, if not all of readers, know the texture and taste of it (if not gloves per se, there’s enough of other leather objects in the world).

It's definitely a creepy piece – and I regret not knowing the canon, because it feels like you managed to capture its creepiness and “aesthetics”, and deeply dysfunctional relationships between everybody (including characters and the world) very, very well. Not knowing the canon, I can’t tell for sure, but it’s definitely a feeling I have.

Misc.

„Right now, I think you’ll be more alive.” – SPAG corrections from ESL should always be taken with a grain of sand, but – I think this sentence miss a word or two, just like this one: “The sensation overwhelmed all of Tim’s senses until all he could do what.”

“I told you I would make it good for you,” it said, before taking Tim’s cock into its mouth.” & “See, Tim?” it said with an empty grin. “I told you you would have a good time.” – it’s a repetition of almost exactly the same phrase, and even if, in reality Tim probably wouldn’t be able to focus well enough to notice it ;), in fiction, if it was non-accidental (but I guess it wasn’t, because the promise repeats twice, too), him commenting on it might help to emphasise the purpose.

Unless, of course, it’s something canon-specific, some obvious quirk of Stranger!Tim – his hollowness? Lacking memory? Being just a puppet with few stock-phrases in its head? – canon-familiar readers would know about already, without any explanation & reminders. This is a risk of giving a con-crit without knowing canon – one might sound like an utter fool.

Grammar subjects – take this with a grain of salt, because, again, ESL & in Polish clarity of subjects is more important than in English (and grammar, not contextual thing), so I might overfocus on it, but there were moments, in which it wasn’t quite clear, imho, who/what does what. Or rather: it was clear once I thought for a second, but if I needed to think, the whole mood was already gone, me pulled out of the narrative. It mostly happened when the actions were described – mostly because, I think, “it” was used for Stranger!Tim and I was constantly linking said “it” to the last neutral noun, be it “a buzz”, “a nerve”, “a box”, “a sensation” etc. A crude solution I can come up with is giving Stranger!Tim pronoun a capital letter (if you think it’s something which might not be totally clear to native English speakers, too).

Oh, and this is a very little thing, but as someone always struggling with summaries, I'm jealously of how clear, informative and instantly hooking up yours are.

Re: through the cracked mirror

[apiroscsizmak]

Thank you so much for such thoughtful commentary! I really appreciate your perspective as someone who doesn't care much about the sex part of porn. While I personally love the sex part as much as all the emotions and tensions at play, the latter can be a challenge to work in at times, so concrit from someone who prioritizes tensions and character dynamics is perfect! And your thoughts on how abstract vs. specific language in porn descriptions tie into broader descriptions are very interesting. And I am glad to hear that the creepiness came through even without you knowing the canon.

Which I add, because perhaps you have the same problem, too – there’s not much descriptions in your fics, in general, just like in mine, no colours, no shapes, no sizes etc. – and then we can at least high-five and commiserate, both Haha, you got me. :D Although I wouldn't say I have no visual imagination, so much as my writing interests lie elsewhere, and I have to make a conscious effort to remember to include physical descriptions (and often forget). It's useful to know that's apparent.

I am also very happy that you singled out the segment about Danny's eyes. That was one of the parts I was happiest with!

And this part of your commentary made me laugh (in a good way!): Unless, of course, it’s something canon-specific, some obvious quirk of Stranger!Tim – his hollowness? Lacking memory? Being just a puppet with few stock-phrases in its head? Those similar lines were honestly me just getting a little repetitive, but purposefully leaning into repetition could have been a great way to explore the Stranger's inhumanity.

Thank you again for your concrit!